1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to handheld electronic devices, and more particularly, to apparatuses for providing power and audio resources for a handheld electronic device.
2. Related Art
Handheld electronic devices such as handheld audio players, PDA's and mobile telephones are being offered with many new features. The features on mobile telephones have evolved beyond simple telephonic communication to become all encompassing mobile devices that include PDA functions such as contact lists, calendars, alarms, and tools and entertainment such as cameras, games, video players and music players. Integrated music players typically play music files in mp3, wma, wav formats or other similar formats. Like all portable music players, the music files are either downloaded from the internet or uploaded from a computer or other device. When a user wants to listen to music that is stored on the mobile telephone without having to use earphones, an external loudspeaker may be used to generate audible audio output from the telephone. The mobile telephone's earphone jack may be connected to a set of loudspeakers either directly or through a tuner. This may be satisfactory in a home or office environment, but to an increasingly mobile society, a portable external loudspeaker is more desirable.
With the proliferation of features on mobile telephones, fitting access to the increasing number of features on the limited real estate available on increasingly smaller mobile phones becomes an ergonomic challenge. Placement of controls, remote sensors, power input, and input and output jacks on the telephone body is carefully engineered for usability as well as integration with the internal architecture of the device. Currently there is no uniform standard or convention for placement of these features. Peripheral devices are typically designed for specific product lines and often for particular models of mobile telephone.
Typical prior art charging stations for mobile telephones are cradle-type devices that retain a bottom portion of the telephone so that the telephone is in a vertical orientation with the top portion unencumbered. They are simply insertion devices having a mating connector to a telephone's power charging port. This configuration assumes that the charging port is located along the bottom edge of the telephone. This is not always the case as these positions vary. Prior telephone cradles typically only provide power charging capabilities.
Since use of the music or video player feature on the telephone requires the user to be able to view the display frequently if not constantly, it would be desirable to provide a dock for the telephone that connects to the earphone or audio-out jack on the telephone. A dock would position the display of the telephone for viewing either on a surface or for handheld use. With a dock, it would be desirable to provide external loudspeakers to amplify the volume of the audio output. As long as the telephone is docked, it would also be desirable to re-charge the battery on the telephone.
There is a need for a telephone dock that can provide the functions described above by engaging the power charging port and the earphone or audio-out jack at the same time. One of the challenges to providing these functions in a dock is that the power charging port and the earphone or audio-out jack may be on opposite edges of the telephone, or on adjacent edges at 90° from one another. In those configurations, an insertion type of dock cannot couple to both ports simultaneously.